


We’ll Be On Fire (hands held higher)

by franticatlantic



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 19:06:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8634463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franticatlantic/pseuds/franticatlantic
Summary: They say you can’t remember pain, not the same way you remember your first kiss or the first time you went camping. But Tyler remembers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for [someone](http://vintagetyler.tumblr.com/post/153504927483/sorry-if-this-seems-kinda-weird-or-stupid-but) on tumblr who requested it. i hope i did it justice.
> 
> title is from the song 'forest' by twenty one pilots.

It starts innocently, as always.

He’s at the old house, on the back lawn. There’s a breeze in the air, brisk, and it rustles the blades of grass at his feet, between his bare toes. It whispers through the trees, makes branches shudder, the leaves fluttering like millions of chittering bugs. Parker lifts her head and sniffs at the air, tracks a butterfly with her big blue eyes and gives an unhurried _woof_.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing in the backyard, just standing there with his old Worthington sweats on and watching the sun sink lower and lower. There’s a pang, a sharp stab of _not right_ before he turns and climbs the two low steps up to the back porch, gives a clap against his thigh that echoes in the stillness of the yard.

“Come on, Parks,” he means to say, but nothing comes out. Parker somehow hears him anyway, rising from the grass and giving a shake of her black and white fur, trotting up to wait for him by the door. Her pink tongue lolls out and she tilts her head, panting.

Parker’s nails clack on the dining room floor when Tyler opens the door, and they’re both greeted by the delicious smell of food wafting from the kitchen. It’s warm and inviting, but still has at least another 30 minutes to go before Tyler should even check on it. Parker idles by the oven, stares at Tyler through the doorway and cocks her head again. She whines and rocks forward, asking when dinner will be ready.

“Soon,” Tyler promises, but can’t find his voice.

Then he’s climbing the stairs and there’s that same twinge, _wrong not right_ , again.

And he’s laying down with the food still in the oven, smell transforming, devolving from warm and comforting and reminding him of his mom’s cooking to burnt and charred and stinging his nostrils. And Parker is whining louder now, trying to warn him of something _wrong not right out of order_.

But Tyler can’t move and there’s warmth crawling throughout the house, setting things ablaze - his TV, the couch, Parker’s dog bed - and he sees all this from his room because he can’t move. And the flames are licking his body, up his arm, and Parker’s not whining anymore and Tyler’s eyes flash open.

And he screams.

And wakes scrabbling at the mottled burnflesh on his elbow with his vocal cords ringing themselves hoarse. There’s his name and a touch to his elbow, but he pulls away because it’s only the fire calling to him, wanting him back. It’s tugging tugging tugging until Tyler goes limp and whimpers, cradling his burnt arm, and realizes those aren’t the hands of the flames.

They’re Josh’s hands, gentle, but still warm. And warmth scares him, makes him want to pull away. Despite knowing that Josh won’t hurt him, that Josh is the one who saved him in the first place.

Josh is the one who pulled him from the smoldering wreckage of his house, who beat the flames from his arm and offered Tyler his oxygen mask. He’s the one who stepped back inside the crumbling foundation when Tyler screamed for someone, anyone, to find his dog, to find Parker. Josh is the one who laid her body - charred and broken - on the front lawn. And rubbed Tyler’s back as he vomited.

It’s Josh who pulls him close now, across their sleep-warm sheets, and whispers, “It’s me, Ty. I’ve got you. There’s no fire.”

Josh’s breath is hot on his ear and Tyler is caught between wanting to burrow back against him for safety and wanting to slink out of bed, lay himself out on the cold wooden floor as he’s been wont to do on a number of occasions. He stays, though, lets Josh run blazing hands over him, under his shirt, lets himself get used to the heat again.

When his breathing is back to normal, but his heart is still beating its warm, jagged rhythm against the slats of his ribs, he turns and presses into Josh, hands caught between them. “I miss Parker.”

He doesn’t admit this often, prefers to spend his days not thinking about his old dog, how good she was, how they used to play fetch in the park on Sundays. He’s sad Josh never got to meet her, but Tyler has now split his life into two distinct timelines: Before Fire and After Fire. Parker belongs to the timeline of Before Fire, when Tyler loved heat, when he lit the fireplace in Winter and basked on the beach in Summer.

She doesn’t belong in his After Fire life, in Josh’s apartment that doesn’t even have a fireplace, or on the beaches Tyler doesn’t see anymore. Even looking at the sun is taxing now because Tyler knows all it is is a great big ball of fire that’s going to explode one day and kill them all.

“I know, bud,” Josh soughs into his hair. He has offered a number of times to buy Tyler a new dog, even another husky if he wants, or to take him down to the local shelter so they can adopt. But even though Parker doesn’t belong After Fire he doesn’t want another After Fire dog. He doesn’t want to look at another dog and be reminded of the one, the things, he lost that day.

An hour later, lain up against the headboard with his arms resting on the duvet, he watches Josh get dressed in the foggy morning light. Josh pulls his undershirt on and Tyler worries. Steps into his boots and Tyler worries. Gives Tyler a lingering kiss to the forehead, a hand curled protectively around the back of his neck, and Tyler feels the worry leap into his throat, strangling him.

He worries that one day he’ll get that fateful call, the one from Josh’s commander, the one telling Tyler that his boyfriend is dead, that a loose piece of scaffolding fell on him, pinned him down as the flames gobbled him up. Other firemen lose their lives like that every day.

“I’m more competent than other firemen,” Josh told him once, confidently, and flexed his chest out.

Tyler laughed until he was blue in the face, because Hillary Clinton was competent, too, and she still lost the election.

Josh acted faux offended that Tyler compared him to Hillary Clinton in the first place and then kissed him in front of the lake with a chill breeze blowing in off the water to cool them off.

But kisses didn’t alleviate fears. Well, maybe they did for other people. But they didn’t for Tyler. Not anymore, not the way they used to when his mother would kiss his cheek and tell him there were no monsters under the bed. Not the way things used to be Before Fire.

So Tyler grabs Josh’s hand. “Don’t go.”

They play this game every morning, and Josh sits on the edge of the bed as he does every morning, runs his other hand through Tyler’s hair. “I can take some time off, Ty. If that’s what you need, I’ve told you. Just let me know and I can take however much time you need.”

But Tyler doesn’t know how much time he’ll need.

That’s a lie. He knows exactly how much time he’ll need. Forever. He’ll never be over this…this childish fear of fire. He can’t even light a candle without shaking.

If Josh took off of work for ‘however long’ Tyler needed, he would be off forever. Tyler knows this.

So he sniffs and pats Josh’s hand. “No. You need to work.”

“You sure?”

Tyler’s not sure, never will be, but Josh is smiling so fondly at him, his fingers stroking so cleanly over the back of his neck, that he has to nod. There’s not much else he can do.

As Josh is heading out Tyler stands by the door and supports his burned elbow with his other hand. “I’ll have dinner ready before you get home.”

“Turned you into a regular housewife,” Josh chuckles. “What’s it gonna be?”

Tyler puts a finger to his lips. “It’s a secret.” Then he pulls Josh close, gives him a hard kiss, and says, “Be safe.”

“I always am.”

In the bathroom, Tyler brushes his teeth with his After Fire toothbrush and showers in Josh’s After Fire shower. He keeps the water cool because they say you can’t remember pain, not the same way you remember your first kiss or the first time you went camping. But Tyler remembers. Remembers the inferno tonguing his body, lapping its way up his arm. And the first time he showered after that it felt like someone stabbing wretched needles into his elbow.

Naked in front of the mirror, he looks at his After Fire body. Much the same except maybe his eyes are blown a little wider, his frame a little more slender because he’s afraid to eat anything too spicy or too oven hot. But Josh has done a good job of keeping the freezer stocked full of ice cream and freezie pops, the fridge filled with pudding and jello.

And then, of course, there’s the marbled skin at the bend of his elbow, stretching halfway down his forearm and corkscrewing up to the back of his bicep. It’s this he stares at the most, knowing it will never heal. Whatever healing it had to do is already done, the skin rough and uneven, ugly. He sees other people looking at it, too, when he wears short sleeves out.

Sometimes he can still feel the burn there, acute, like an afterimage on the backs of your eyelids or the way stubbing your toe lingers for hours afterward. He runs his fingers over the spotty skin and looks down into the After Fire sink.

Even a part of him belongs in the Before Fire, he thinks, and part in the After Fire.

He starts dinner at half past 5, preps the veggies and the noodles, fills a pot with water, and sets it on the stove. One of the knobs of which he takes hold of and pushes, hears the click of gas, and then-

The spark of fire under the pot blooms out before him and Tyler jumps back, knocks the plate of vegetables to the floor. The plate shatters and Tyler steps in a pile of the serrated pieces, broccoli crunching underfoot.

There’s fire at his feet, eating his soles and biting at his toes. And it’s springing up in front of him, baring its ugly teeth. Tyler waves a hand in front of him, as if to ward it off, and whimpers. He jerks away from the flames and his hand slips on the counter, sending him sprawling against the bottom row of cabinets. He backs himself up, blood smearing across the floor from the bottoms of his feet, and huddles with his hands clamped over his eyes.

That’s where Josh finds him when he gets home, cowering against the hard wood with bloody tracks of broccoli and mushrooms on the linoleum. He throws the door wide, shouting something Tyler doesn’t quite catch, waiting for a response that never comes.

And when he hurries to Tyler’s side and yanks his hands away from his eyes Tyler is crying. He doesn’t want to be, but there you have it.

“There was a fire,” he says immediately, choking through a series of sobs.

“Where?” Josh asks, and glances around, as though expecting char marks or burnt carpet, the drapes gone up in flames.

“There.” Tyler points to the stove and Josh stills.

And understands.

That there was no fire, not the kind Tyler’s talking about anyway. He exhales and goes to the stove, turns it off and peers inside the pot where all the water has evaporated.

Then turns back to Tyler, who has started to rock back and forth, calming himself. There was a fire, there really was. It ate his feet that’s why they hurt and it burned his arm again that’s why it stings.

“Tyler…” Josh’s voice is soft, pulling at his wrists. “Tyler, where are you bleeding?”

Tyler shakes his head. He’s not bleeding - flames cauterize wounds instantly. He’s not bleeding he’s not he’s not he’s-

Josh hauls him up against his will and Tyler tries to fight it, but Josh is much stronger than him. He’s led to the bathroom smearing blood along the hallway and Josh forces him to sit on the edge of the tub with his feet out. “Fuck, Tyler.”

And Tyler apologizes, over and over with his head in his hands while Josh tries to pull the pieces of plate out of the bottoms of his feet with the tweezers. He rocks as well as he can with his legs sticking straight out like they are, his arms crossed over his middle, the fingers of one hand brushing over his other elbow, feeling the burn, the way his skin is sticky but not.

“Tyler, I think I need to take you to the hospital. Some of these won’t stop bleeding.”

Tyler is used to hospitals, spent a fair amount of time in one After Fire so they could tend to his burn and his lungs, addled from the smoke.

He doesn’t know why he laid down that day, why he thought taking a nap with food in the oven was a good idea. Parker tried to warn him, smart dog that she was, but.

Maybe he wanted this to happen. Maybe after everything he actually loves fire, wants it to consume him. Like a trashcan blazing in a prison cell. Like abandoned bonfires in the woods being picked apart by the wind, starting forest fires.

At the hospital Josh sits on the edge of Tyler’s bed and holds his hand. “I have to take some time off, Ty. I have to help you get better.”

Tyler sniffs. He looks up at Josh, cool and clandestine in the stark white hospital room. “Maybe…” Tyler glances to the door, then back to Josh. “…maybe one day you can get me that dog.”

“I’d love that.”

The kiss Josh presses to his forehead is warm and Tyler doesn’t mind it.

**Author's Note:**

> i have [tumblr](http://vintagetyler.tumblr.com/).


End file.
